Sen. Elissa Slotkin's warning to young Americans not to join the Trump administration could backfire by handing Trump officials legal ammunition to derail the investigations Democrats hope to launch if they retake Congress, a former federal prosecutor warned.

The freshman Michigan Democrat said last month that she wants her party to pursue "signature cases" against officials who helped Trump, reasoning that it would discourage young Americans from considering jobs in his administration.

"I want that deterrence message sent," Slotkin said during an Oct. 13 event at the University of Chicago, describing how young graduates might fear "buying myself a ton of problems" by joining the administration.

But Abhishek Kambli, a former deputy associate attorney general in Trump's Justice Department, said Slotkin's remarks could backfire if Democrats retake either chamber of Congress in the midterm elections and gain greater control over congressional investigations.

"If they just throw in boilerplate language that this is for legislative purpose, anyone challenging those subpoenas will have that entire record to demonstrate that it's anything but that," Kambli, a partner at Holtzman Vogel, told Fox News Digital.

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While Congress has broad authority to conduct investigations, subpoena witnesses and review government operations, the Supreme Court has ruled that lawmakers cannot use those powers solely to punish individuals.

The Supreme Court confronted those limits in 2020, when House Democrats attempted to obtain Trump's personal financial records through congressional subpoenas.

In Trump v. Mazars, the justices established a four-factor test requiring courts to examine whether Congress demonstrated a legitimate legislative need for the records, whether its requests were sufficiently narrow, whether the information could be obtained elsewhere and what burden the subpoenas would impose on the president.

The court sent the dispute back to lower courts without ruling that the subpoenas satisfied those standards, leaving unresolved questions about how the framework would be applied.

"So it's not enough just to tack on a legislative purpose," Kambli said, arguing that courts must look beyond Congress' stated reasons for an investigation to determine whether its demands are constitutionally justified.

Democrats' public remarks could become evidence against them if future subpoenas are challenged, according to Kambli.

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"They don't have to bury their head in the sand," Kambli said of the courts. "I think they have to look at the facts of the case and look at it in terms of how they fits into the broader comments that they made."

House Democrats are already laying the groundwork for investigations into Trump's family business dealings and potential conflicts of interest if they regain control of Congress. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has also vowed to expand his investigation into donors funding Trump's White House ballroom if Democrats retake the Senate,

But another constitutional law expert questioned whether Democrats' remarks would carry enough legal weight to undermine future congressional investigations.

Michael Morley, a professor at Florida State University College of Law, said courts generally recognize that politicians bring partisan motivations to congressional investigations and would be reluctant to invalidate subpoenas merely because of provocative public remarks.

"I don't think that the fact that there might be partisan motivations for a congressional investigation would ultimately be a valid basis for refusing to comply with a subpoena," Morley told Fox News Digital.

"At the end of the day, a court is going to be very reluctant to conclude, based on one or more members' possible subjective motivations, that Congress lacks constitutional authority to investigate," Morley said.

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He also emphasized that Trump v. Mazars focused specifically on subpoenas for the president's personal records, arguing that applying the same heightened legal standards to subpoenas targeting other administration officials would be a stretch.

But Morley said Slotkin's language could give judges pause when the legal basis for a subpoena is already uncertain.

"It's bad atmospherics," he said, adding that such statements could make courts "marginally less likely" to resolve doubts in Democrats' favor.

Slotkin has rejected accusations that she wants to target Americans merely for working for Republicans. She told CNN that she was talking about officials who break the law or misuse taxpayer dollars, calling the criticism "manufactured outrage."

But Kambli warned the consequences could extend beyond whether Democratic subpoenas survive legal challenges, saying that investigations could inflict financial and reputational damage even without criminal charges.

"There is the idea that the process is the punishment, and there is no doubt that some members of Congress intend to use the process to bankrupt people that can't afford legal representation," Kambli said.

He also said that while Trump's Justice Department would be unlikely to prosecute administration officials over criminal contempt referrals from a Democratic-controlled Congress, that could change under a future Democratic administration.

Morley also criticized the prospect of intimidating young government employees who may lack the resources to defend themselves.

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"That's just not how we want our political disputes to be handled," Morley said.

The Justice Department is investigating allegations that Democratic operatives recruited Alaska Senate candidate Daniel J. Sullivan, dubbed "Decoy Dan," to siphon votes from Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan—prompting liberal-leaning election-law experts to accuse the Trump administration of federal overreach.

But former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky argued that the Biden-era Justice Department’s prosecution of Donald Trump over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election laid the groundwork for the Alaska probe.

"The Justice Department has talked about a potential conspiracy to defraud the voters of Alaska and people are saying, 'Oh, he's got no case. That's a weak case,'" Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, told Fox News Digital. "Well, I suggest you do a Google search and pull up the indictment that Jack Smith got against Donald Trump in the District of Columbia. He set a precedent for this."

Joined by FBI officials and Alaska State Troopers, Alaska U.S. Attorney Michael Heyman announced at a Friday press conference that the Justice Department has been investigating whether Daniel J. Sullivan, a retired school teacher who will appear on the ballot without a party affiliation, was colluding with Democratic operatives tied to Democratic candidate Mary Peltola's campaign.

The Justice Department previously sued Alaska election officials, seeking to block certification if Sen. Dan Sullivan loses re-election by fewer votes than those cast for Daniel J. Sullivan. The lawsuit was amended Friday to include reporting by The New York Times that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and senior aides of Peltola's campaign allegedly worked to recruit candidates who could pull votes away from Sen. Sulllivan. Heyman mentioned the Times reporting repeatedly in the press conference.

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"We are taking that extremely seriously," Hetman said.

Sources at the Justice Department told Fox News Thursday that the Trump administration had issued more than 30 subpoeanas in a span of 24 hours as part of its criminal investigation into the alleged collusion, but Heyman did not say at the press conference what criminal charges are being pursued.

"I'm not making any assumptions on whether a crime has been committed or not," Heyman said. "That's why we are conducting that thorough investigation."

Von Spakovsky, a former Federal Election Commission commissioner, said potential indictments of Democratic operatives in the Alaska Senate race could rely on federal statutes similar to those Smith, the former special counsel, used in his 2023 indictment of Trump over alleged efforts to overturn the election.

Spakovsky pointed to charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy against rights. In Trump’s case, prosecutors alleged that he used fraud and deceit to obstruct the federal government’s process for certifying the 2020 election and conspired to deprive voters of having their lawful votes counted and honored.

Spakovsky said prosecutors could potentially apply similar theories in Alaska if they determine that Democratic operatives knowingly recruited Daniel J. Sullivan to confuse voters and divert votes from Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan.

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Smith's "indictment is basically along exactly those same lines, claiming that that Donald Trump was trying to defraud U.S. voters from fair and honest elections. So Jack Smith and Democrats, they set the precedent for the kind of investigation Justice Department is doing now."

Aubrey Wieber, executive director of 907 Initiative, a progressive advocacy group running critical ads against Sen. Sullivan, told Alaska Public Media that the press conference announcing the investigation "on the eve of the election" may be stemming from ulterior motives.

"One could say it appears that they are trying to interfere in an election and put their thumb on the scale," Wieber said.

The Justice Department's lawsuit was filed on Oct. 22, prompting a parade of condemnations from those who argued the federal government had "no authority" to intervene, with many pointing to the Alaska Supreme Court rejecting the state's push to disqualify Daniel J. Sullivan from appearing on the ballot.

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"DOJ's theory: two candidates named Sullivan might confuse voters. The Alaska Supreme Court settled that in June and the ballot labels the incumbent. DOJ has no role in state election law," Omar Noureldin, senior vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause of Common Cause, a self-described no-partisan watchdog organization.

Spakovsky called recruiting a candidate with the same name as a political opponent a "dirty trick," but said the recruitment itself was not necessarily a criminal violation. He said the legal analysis could change if operatives paid the candidate or provided services to help organize his campaign.

"The place you run into potential issues is not only if you just recruit a candidate, but you’re being paid to recruit that candidate, and you then provide services to help him run his campaign and organize it," Spakovsky said.

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Providing campaign assistance outside of being a volunteer is an in-kind contribution subject to federal reporting and contribution rules. Spakovsky said any failure to properly report such contributions could create a separate campaign-finance violation.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has tapped two high-powered Washington, D.C.-based attorneys who have previously represented elected officials at the highest echelon of American politics.

Amid dueling federal investigations — one for immigration fraud and another for financial disclosure discrepancies — the embattled Somali-born lawmaker hired Amy Jeffress and Joshua Matz, according to a CBS report, both of whom are partners at Hecker Fink LLP.

The attorneys have in the past represented Democrat clients and taken on left-leaning cases — especially those taking aim at President Donald Trump, his administration and his supporters.

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Amy Jeffress

Jeffress is a former federal prosecutor whose biography says she tried more than 40 cases during a decade in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia, where she was Chief of the National Security Section. She has also been a Department of Justice (DOJ) Attaché.

She served as former President Joe Biden's attorney in his lawsuit against the DOJ earlier this year. In that case, Biden sought to halt the release of audio recordings between himself and his "Promise Me, Dad" book ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer. The audio was recorded in 2016 and 2017, and were subject to a FOIA request from the Heritage Foundation in 2024.

They were cited during special counsel Robert Hur's investigation into whether Biden illegally retained classified information from his term as vice president, and piqued the interest of conservatives demanding answers about Biden's mental acuity.

The court declined to block the release of the recordings where Biden ad frequent memory lapses, and they were made public in July.

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Before her time at Hecker Fink, Jeffress, a Yale Law graduate from 1992, served as counsel for then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrat-led House January 6 committee, which spent two years investigating the riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. She represented the committee when it was sued by a Trump campaign spokesperson, Taylor Budowich, after the committee subpoenaed his bank records.

Jeffress also represented Trump foe and former FBI attorney Lisa Page — a key figure in the left's Russiagate conspiracy theory — during congressional scrutiny into the FBI's handling of the matter. Page later sued the DOJ for releasing her text messages with her then-FBI colleague and lover Peter Strzok.

In the messages, Strzok assuaged Page's concerns that Trump would become president by vowing that the FBI would stop it, and referred to an "insurance policy" against his presidency. That case was settled in 2024.

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Jeffress is married to U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper of the District of Washington, D.C., who in May ruled that it was illegal for the the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center to add Trump's name. Trump publicly criticized Cooper as "highly conflicted," due to his relationship with Jeffress.

Joshua Matz

Matz is also a partner at Hecker Fink. He graduated from Harvard Law, and clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

"Joshua’s practice has long included a focus on democracy and elections," his biography page says.

He represented the state of Pennsylvania in defending the certification of its election results, including arguing before the Supreme Court.

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He was counsel to House Democrats during both failed impeachment attempts against Trump during his first term in office.

Matz also represented E. Jean Carroll in two separate civil cases against Trump related to his denial of her of sexual assault claims against him. He was never criminally charged. In 2022, Carroll accused Trump of defaming her in his denial of her account of an incident she claims happened in 1996. A New York jury found Trump liable for defamation and for sexual assault.

Prior to that case, in 2019, a jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million for defamation stemming from other comments made by Trump.

Matz represented students, parents and teachers who opposed Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, which his biography describes as the "Don't Say Gay" law, which restricted teaching students about sexual orientation and gender identity.

He also successfully represented Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear when he was sued for COVID-19 lockdowns, including school closures, and victims of the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville.

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Now, Matz and Jeffress are representing Omar as she seeks to battle two federal probes. In a video message posted to her social media earlier this month, the lawmaker pleaded with her supporters to keep sending money, noting that her fight against the investigations would be costly.

Omar's attorneys did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Neither did the White House.

Federal Judge James Boasberg, dubbed a "Radical left lunatic" by President Donald Trump, is presiding over several high-profile cases challenging actions made by the Trump administration, raising questions about how judges are assigned to cases.

The scrutiny comes as Boasberg, an Obama-appointed chief judge of the Washington, D.C. district court, oversees a challenge brought by several media outlets seeking to force the Justice Department to unseal the search warrant on the home of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., stemming from two federal investigations.

"Judge James Boasberg is now involved with the Ilhan Omar case," Steve Ferguson, a self-described business owner with more than 250,000 followers on X, wrote in a social media post. "Is everything rigged?"

In the federal court of the District of Columbia, cases are assigned to judges randomly by an electronic system managed by the clerk's office operating under the direction of the Calendar and Case Management Committee, according to the rules of the court. The committee consists of three to five judges appointed by the chief justice.

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There are exceptions to the random-assignment process. For example, criminal grand jury matters are assigned to and overseen by the chief judge, currently Boasberg. This means Boasberg’s assignment to oversee the fight over unsealing the search warrant for Omar was "not a surprise" to Eric Wessan, Iowa’s solicitor general.

"But there are a lot of cases that seem to be going to judges maybe based on those cases having similarities which is not what the local rules say," Wessan told Fox News Digital.

When a case needs to be reassigned, the Calendar and Case Management Committee will determine how the reassignment is made.

Wessan suggested that concerns over how case assignments are made is valid, considering some of the high-profile cases against the Trump administration which have appeared in Boasberg's docket.

"If one is just following anecdotally, there does seem to be a lot of high-profile cases in front of judges that seem to be expressing unusual amounts of frustration or disagreement with the administration," Wessan said, urging greater transparency in how case assignments are made.

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The fight over unsealing the release of Omar's search warrant is just one of several cases involving the Trump administration and now on Boasberg's docket. Boasberg is also overseeing California’s lawsuit against the Trump administration over voter-roll disputes. On Friday, he ordered the administration to provide the state with the names and supporting information for roughly 20,000 people whom the DOJ claims are noncitizens on California’s voter rolls by the end of the day.

Boasberg has issued several consequential rulings against the Trump administration, including a high-profile March 2025 order directing the administration to turn around deportation flights carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador. The Trump administration fought against the order, pointing to the Alien Enemies Act as legal justification for the deportations. The dispute over the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act eventually reached the Supreme Court, which vacated Boasberg's temporary restraining order blocking deportation flights, ruling that the case was brought in the wrong jurisdiction.

That same month, Boasberg was assigned a lawsuit seeking to preserve Signal messages after top Trump administration officials discussed plans for a Yemen strike in a group chat that accidentally included Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. He later ordered the administration to preserve the messages.

The string of cases prompted Reps. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Chip Roy, R-Texas, to send a letter in May 2025 to the court clerk asking for greater clarity on how judicial assignments are made. The lawmakers questioned whether assignments were truly random, as the court’s rules state.

"The Committee cannot independently verify the randomness of case assignments because the composition of assignment decks is kept secrets," the lawmakers wrote.

"We must understand the nature of the case assignment process in the District Court—which is considering a number of cases challenging the Trump Administration’s policy decisions—to consider and develop appropriate legislation," the lawmakers wrote.

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Meanwhile, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., introduced legislation in July that would require federal district courts to assign cases randomly, without exceptions, naming it the Boasberg Act. The bill is currently stalled in committee.

"Judge Boasberg is the poster child for a rogue judge and exposed serious loopholes in our judicial system. Randomly assigning cases among judges ensures the American people can have confidence in the impartiality of our courts," Schmitt said in a statement.

Under the rules of D.C. Court, the chief justice does not have the power to reassign a case. The Calendar and Case Management Committee handles case reassignments. The court must notify the judges and attorneys involved, but it does not have to publicly explain why a case was reassigned. Wessan has called for greater transparency.

"The rules shouldn’t say one thing if it’s not true. But if it is true, they could just say so. I think the issue is with the exceptions—what happens in those exceptional cases and how often do they occur?" Wessan said.

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"Given the frequency of the concerning episodes in the district court, erring on the side of transparency is probably prudent to the extent that there are exceptions to the normal random-assignment system," Wessan said.

A federal judge on Friday temporarily barred the Trump administration from threatening election workers with criminal prosecution over ballots tied to suspected noncitizens.

U.S. District Judge Trina Thompson found that the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security likely violated the Voting Rights Act's prohibition against voter intimidation by threatening election workers with prosecution for processing ballots from voters the administration claims are ineligible, just days before the midterm elections.

"One of the hallmarks of a fair election is the freedom to exercise the right to vote free from threat, fear, or intimidation," Thompson, a Biden-appointed judge, wrote in the eight-page order.

The ruling comes as the Trump administration has sought voter registration information from states ahead of the Nov. 3 elections, arguing that its efforts are aimed at preventing noncitizen voting and protecting election integrity.

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The temporary restraining order prohibits federal officials from threatening, intimidating or coercing state and local election workers into halting ballot processing solely because the administration alleges certain registered voters are ineligible.

The order also bars the administration from demanding that election officials remove registered voters from voter rolls, refuse to issue them ballots or segregate or decline to count their ballots based solely on those allegations.

The lawsuit was brought by labor unions and civil rights organizations, including the Service Employees International Union and the NAACP.

"Because the public has a paramount interest in ensuring that election officials and workers are able to carry out their work in accordance with federal law and election procedure, and the official day of the Elections is only a couple of days away, the balance of the equities and public interest weigh in Plaintiffs' favor," Thompson wrote.

"Ballots have already been issued," Thompson also noted. "Americans have already begun voting."

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Thompson also ordered the administration to notify state and local governments that received the disputed letters that the demands and threats of prosecution contained in them have been blocked.

Earlier Friday, a federal appeals court separately ruled against the Trump administration's emergency request to require California to set aside mail-in ballots associated with roughly 20,000 voters federal officials identified as likely noncitizens while their citizenship status was verified.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Justice Department's request to set aside the disputed mail-in ballots while officials reviewed the voters' citizenship status, handing the administration another setback just four days before Election Day.

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.

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Fox News Digital's Jasmine Baehr and Reuters contributed to this report.